Photo: WTCC Media

Yvan Muller leads Chevrolet top four at Curitiba

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Yvan Muller has taken his third pole position of the season at Curitiba, leading a Chevrolet top four ahead of Alain Menu, Rob Huff and Michel Nykjaer, with Gabriele Tarquini just behind in fifth in his SEAT.

During the first segment of qualifying, the Chevrolet drivers were safely through into Q2, with the RML-run works drivers in the top three and Michel Nykjaer and Alex MacDowall making it an all Chevrolet top five.

Some drivers were clearly struggling on set-up however, most notably independents’ trophy front-runners Stefano D’Aste and Pepe Oriola. D’Aste lost control of his BMW 320 TC twice at Turn 8, and was unstable on even his best laps and qualified in 21st and last position, whilst independents’ points leader Pepe Oriola ended up in 14th place and will start there for both of tomorrow’s races in his SUNRED-run SEAT León WTCC.

In Q2, Yvan Muller set a time of 1:22.522 on his first flying lap, with team-mate Alain Menu just a hundredth of a second behind. But the three-time champion improved again on his second run to put pole position further out of reach with a time of 1:22.289.

Although Menu was also able to improve his time, he was unable to overhaul the gap to Muller and had to settle for second with Rob Huff completing an all works Chevrolet top three.

The fastest independent driver was that of Michel Nykjaer, back in the World Touring Car Championship this weekend as a last minute stand-in for Pasquale Di Sabatino at Bamboo Engineering. The Dane, who competes in the Scandinavian Touring Car Championship this year for Chevrolet Motorsport Sweden, was just less than half a second slower than Muller and secured fourth on the grid, with Gabriele Tarquini fifth fastest in the Lukoil Racing SEAT.

Alex MacDowall also featured strongly in his Bamboo Engineering Chevrolet, qualifying in sixth place just ahead of Darryl O’Young’s Special Tuning Racing SEAT.

Tiago Monteiro was eighth, with Tom Coronel and Norbert Michelisz completing the top ten. As a result, the two BMW drivers will start on the front row for the reversed grid second race tomorrow.

The two Fords of James Nash and Tom Chilton struggled more in qualifying than they had in free practice, with Nash qualifying in 19th place and Chilton 20th.

The morning warm-up takes place at 09:05 local time (14:05 CET), with race one underway at 15:05 (20:05 CET).